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Monday, March 29, 2010

Can Google Cure our Poverty Ills?

Here is an assignment I just wrote for my English 300 class. Yes, I currently live in Google, KS. Oddly I hadn't taken the whole thing very seriously until I wrote this paper. Funny how writing an English paper can make you think, even at my age. I think I am going to try to get it published in the school newspaper or maybe the local paper.

The Google Cure

Here on Washburn campus, it seems the internet is all around
us. We've got complete Wi-Fi coverage in all the buildings and many of us have
3G wireless internet on our cell phones for when we walk outside. One may be
prompted to ask, “So what's the big deal about this Google thing?” As many of
you may know, for the month of March we no longer live in Topeka, KS. We now
live in Google, KS (Hrenchir, 2010). At least till April Fool's Day. So, then, what is the big deal with this new ultra-high-speed internet service Google may or may not offer in our fair city? Why should any of us care? We've already got
all the internet we could want and then some. Well, some of us care because of
all the other people in town it could affect. You see, not everyone has access
to the internet, especially not at a speed that is actually useful. This
disparity has become known as the “Digital Divide.” Bharat Mehra, an assistant
professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee
who specializes in “the use of information and communication technologies to
enable and empower communities to meet their needs and goals” (Mehra, n.d.) defines the “Digital Divide” as “the troubling gap between those who use […] the Internet and those who do not” (Mehra, Merkel, & Bishop, 2004, p. 782). In a report he co-wrote in 2001, Mehra went even further to say, “The digital divide is really a socioeconomic, cultural, and power divide that exists at both local and global levels” (Bishop, Bazzell, Mehra, & Smith, 2001). This troubling gap, as you will see, can have profound effects.

You may not have noticed with all this “free” Wi-Fi flying
around, but over the last decade or so that gap between the technology “haves”
and the “have-nots” has been getting bigger rather than smaller. According to a
2004 report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NITA), an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce, in the decade before the
report was issued this gap grew considerably, especially for children and the
elderly. In fact, the gap grew by 25% when comparing those with the highest and
lowest levels of education (National Telecommunication and Information Administration, 2004).

This “gap” or “digital divide” didn't just occur in a
vacuum, either. There are many who say the disparity between the technological
haves and have-nots is directly related to the similar economic disparities
within our society. Lisa J. Servon is one such person. Dr. Servon is Dean and
Associate Professor at Milano, the New School for Management and Urban Policy
at an innovative university in New York City called, simply, “The New School.”
In her 2002 book Bridging the Digital Divide: Technology, Community, and
Public Policy, she makes the case that this digital divide “is a symptom of
a larger and more complex problem — the problem of persistent poverty and
inequality” (2002, p. 2). So, like so many of our social problems, the availability of internet access is tied to poverty. But how so? Is the connection just coincidental? Or is it perhaps that the poor are simply not interested in the internet? Well, not according to the Social Science Research Council.
In their report, Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities,
commissioned by the FCC and just recently completed, none of low-income people
they interviewed “needed to be convinced of the importance of Internet use or
of the value of broadband adoption in the home” (Dailey, Bryne, Powell, Karaganis, & Chung, 2010, p. 15) The logical conclusion seems to be that those living in poverty have little access to the internet simply because they are poor. They don't have the money to afford the internet. But there is more to
poverty than just money.

Sure, it is easy to define poverty
in strict financial terms. The US Census Bureau defines poverty for a family of
four as earning below $21,834 (before taxes) (US Census Bureau, 2009). This income level — and similar numbers for families of
other sizes and compositions — are bandied about so often that one could be
excused for accepting the absolute measure of cash-money as the only way to
determine poverty. However, sociologists have long used a different measure of
poverty called “relative poverty.” As Richard Schaefer, author of Sociology Matters,
a standard Sociology textbook here at Washburn, describes it, “relative poverty
is a floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a
society, whatever their lifestyles, are judged to be disadvantaged in
comparison with the nation as a whole” (2008, p. 137). According to this definition, “poverty” can mean the lack
of any resource that is widely available to others; even if that resource is
access to the internet. Of course some may say, “Yeah, but the internet? Is that
really so important that those without it could be considered to be 'in
poverty'?” Again, our friends at the Social Science Research Council have an
answer to our question. One of their primary conclusions in the afore-mentioned
report is that “broadband access is increasingly a requirement of
socio-economic inclusion” (Dailey et al., 2010, p. 3). If one is not included then one is necessarily excluded.
This idea of inclusion and exclusion brings up the notion of social class.

In that Sociology textbook I mentioned earlier, Schaefer
states that “Income inequality is a basic characteristic of a class system” (2008, p. 124). This means that cash-money is certainly one way to
determine which “class” one may belong to. Lack of money will certainly include
one in the “impoverished” class and exclude one from the “wealthy” class. But,
again, there is more to all this than money. One of the founding fathers of the
study of Sociology was a man named Max Weber (pronounced “VAYber”) who was born
in Germany back in 1864 (Schaefer, 2008, p. 11). As Schaefer explains it:

Weber used the term class to refer to a group of people who
have a similar level of wealth and income. For example, certain workers in the
United States support their families through minimum-wage jobs. According to
Weber's definition, these wage earners constitute a class because they share
the same economic position and fate (2008, p. 127).

Take note of that last word, “fate,” as it is
especially important. You see, one’s class isn't just a status report. It is
also a prediction for one’s future. Schaefer says one's class “can influence
social mobility” (2008, p. 124). Finally, Weber has even more to say about class. This
comes circuitously via another famous sociologist, C. Wright Mills, from
Richard Schaefer's textbook:

Max Weber thought that class was closely related to one's
life with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life
experiences (Gerth and Mills 1958). Life chances are reflected in such
measures as housing, education, and health. Occupying a higher position in
society improves a person's life chances and brings greater access to social
rewards. Occupying a lower position forces a person to devote more energy and
resources to the necessities of life (Schaefer, 2008, p. 140).

Though Weber lived long before the information age, if he were alive today I am
certain he would agree that access to the internet — with the access to important
information it provides and the ability to communicate it facilitates — would
count as one of those important “life chances.” This means there is an entire
class of people who could be considered “impoverished” simply because they live
on the wrong side of that digital divide.

Those who do
live on the wrong side of the digital divide — the wrong side of the
fiber-optic tracks, as it were — consist primarily of “minorities, specifically
African American and Hispanic Americans, those who are poor and of the working
class, individuals of low-income, those who possess less than a high school
level of education, children of single parents, and residents of inner-cities
and rural areas, and the elderly” (National Telecommunication and Information Administration, 2004). According to a 2007 report from the same agency, just over half of all Americans do not use broadband internet (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2007). The numbers in this report are a little spread out, and some are in additional documents available on the same web page. In order to make it a little easier to
see the staggering differences I put the information into the graph below:

As you can see, there is a definite distinction between
broadband use in rural and urban areas. The difference in proportions of those who
have broadband is as high as 20% at some income levels. As a former independent
computer consultant who provided services to both rural and urban customers, I
can tell you that a large reason for this difference is the high cost of
broadband out in those rural areas. Cable TV and DSL-based broadband usually
don't reach very far outside of city limits in many areas. Users must resort to
wireless or satellite-based services that usually cost at least twice as much
for half the bandwidth, and the service is often pretty unreliable as well. In
order to provide his business with truly fast and reliable broadband internet,
one of my customers had to install a six-foot satellite dish and pay hundreds
of dollars per month for the service. The highest disparity, though, is that
related to income. As you can see, there is a staggering difference in usage
rates between those at the lower income ranges and those at the upper end. In
fact approximately five times as many households in the upper income range have
broadband than those in the income range with the lowest usage. According to
Terry T. Kidd, author of The Handbook of Research on Human Performance and
Instructional Technology (a $600 dollar textbook, yikes!) and former
Director of Instructional Development and Support Services at the University of
Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health, “This trend indicates that
those who have the means only become more information-rich, while those who are
poor and of the working class, mostly those in the inner city/urban
environments are lagging even further behind” (2009, p. 89). I guess the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer in more ways than one.

However,
merely lagging behind in terms of access to the internet is not the only
problem. There are many who say that this “internet impoverishment” actually
reinforces the economic poverty of those affected. In fact this notion is so
widespread that the World Information Society Report, produced by the
United Nations in 2007 had this to say about information and communication
technology (ICT), which includes broadband internet:

At the World Summit,
leaders from every country recognized the fundamental role that ICTs can play
in promoting economic growth, social development and cohesion, as well as a
sense of cultural identity. […] The ability to use ICTs is a key skill that
increasingly determines the employability and standard of living of many
citizens. Access to ICTs now drives access to information and knowledge, which,
in turn, can decide access to wealth and affluence. A society in which a
significant part of the population feels excluded from the benefits that ICT
access brings is a society that is fundamentally insecure, at peril of social
disintegration (International Telecommunication Union, 2007, p. 13).

and

ICTs are an engine for
economic growth in their own right. Economic poverty is directly related to
information poverty (2007, p. 116).

You can't get much clearer than
that. Without access to broadband internet, it is difficult for those in lower
income groups to get ahead. And when others do have access those others will be
able to outpace their information impoverished fellow citizens at an even
greater rate, thus effectively increasing the relative poverty of the poor.

So, to sum up, poverty is a likely cause for dramatically
low broadband accessibility, creating an entire class of information have-nots,
in both our cities and in the country. And this lack of access then has a
direct effect on increasing poverty within that class, in a cycle that — if not
necessarily vicious — still needs to be broken. The leaders of the world agree.
They even held a summit to address the issue. Google's ultra-high-speed
internet experiment is just that, an experiment. No one knows what effect it
will eventually have. Many who are vying for Google's attention seem to focus
on the ultra-high-speed aspect of the service. Though some seem to believe that
Google intends to connect everyone in the chosen cities to this 1,000 megabit
connection, Google is merely planning to “offer service at a competitive price
to at least 50,000, and potentially up to 500,000 people” (Google, 2010). As far as I can tell, that figure is all-total, across all of the chosen cities. That is not really very many people when you think about it. Therefore, the question again arises, “What is the big deal with this
Google thing?” It certainly isn't going to instantly provide all the poor with
broadband access. In fact, if as few as 10,000 people in the city get access to
the service it could merely serve to make the digital divide even deeper. I
believe the true effect of this “experiment” will not be a direct one. I
believe, and hope, that the introduction of Google's ultra-high-speed internet
service — even though few will be able to actually connect to it, let alone
make any real use of all that extra bandwidth — will create competition in a
market which I’m sure many in town will agree has been sorely lacking in competition
for years. I hope that this competition will spur other internet service
providers to build out their bandwidth to larger areas and offer higher speeds
at more reasonable rates. This, then, will have an effect on the poor. By
prodding all the other internet service providers to lower their rates, I hope Google's
experiment will eventually improve the lives of the poor people of Topeka by
giving them access to the information and communication abilities they need to
get ahead. And that will be a big deal.

National Telecommunication and Information
Administration. (2004). A nation online: entering the broadband age
(Full Report). Washington, D.C.: National Telecommunication and Information
Administration. Retrieved from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/